David Steel

David Steel (21 March 1938-) was leader of the UK Liberal Party from 7 July 1976 to 16 July 1988, succeeding Jo Grimond and preceding Paddy Ashdown.

Biography
David Steel was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland in 1938, and he was educated at Edinburgh University. He entered Parliament in a 1965 by-election as Liberal MP for Roxburgh. He rose to prominence in 1966-7 through the successful passage of his parliamentary bill to legalize abortion. As Liberal chief whip from 1970 to 1975, and as leader from 1977, he developed the idea of realigning British political parties, and put this into action by supporting the Labour government in the Lib-Lab Pact of 1977-8. When the UK Social Democratic Party was formed in 1981, he led the Liberal Party into an alliance with it. The parties fought together in the 1983 and 1987 elections, but Steel and the former SDP leader Roy Jenkins believed that they should merge in order to be truly effective. Once the merger into the Socail and Liberal Democrats was complete, he did not stand for the leadership, so as to emphasize the new departure for the party. He left Parliament in 1997 and served in the Scottish Parliament from 1999 to 2003, when he retired.